Best in Upstate

John Moriello, who has been an ardent follower and commentator on New York high school sports for decades, is writing a weekly column called "Best In Upstate," which is designed to fly above all of the state sectional borders. You can reach John at nysswa@gmail.com or @nysswa on Twitter. He oversees the New York State Sportswriters Association web page of high school rankings.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

I think we've heard that expression before in a TV commercial for dandruff shampoo. It's also a quote frequently attributed to Will Rogers, who gets credit for the 33 percent of wisdom that doesn't get assigned to Mark Twain or W.C. Fields.

But I digress ...

While that stuff about first impressions is true, you do sometimes get a second chance to tackle issues that everyone thought had been dealt with long ago but have taken on new life like — Warning: spoiler alert ahead — characters in an Avengers movie. That is going to be one of the themes of the quarterly meeting of the NYSPHSAA's Executive Committee on Thursday, May 2 in Saratoga Springs, and the assembled representatives will even take a stab at closing the books on something they fixed a long time ago ... only to forget soon afterward that they fixed it.

The Executive Committee is the New York State Public High School Athletic Association's chief operating body. Two representatives from each of the 11 sections meet quarterly to vote on matters that have been working their way through the process, typically for from between six months and a year.

Watkins Glen's Adrienna Solomon (20) puts up a shot against Cambridge during the girls Class C state semifinal at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy March 15, 2019.(Photo: Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News)

Thursday's meeting will be a bit different because some major items on the agenda go back quite a bit longer than just six to 12 months. In fact, the hot topic of the day will be an issue that's already been voted on twice in the past decade and has consumed a lot of floor time at state and sectional meetings since October 2017.

Whose rules to follow?

Nearly every sport sanctioned by the NYSPHSAA follows the rulebooks of the National Federation of State High Schools Association, though typically not word for word. For instance, boys basketball in New York doesn't follow the NFHS rule on timeouts, hockey allows for smaller rosters and girls lacrosse uses a field with different dimensions.

There are also some sports that don't follow NFHS rules at all. The best example is girls basketball, which has been played under NCAA rules in New York since at least the mid-1980s. There's a lot to like about the NCAA rules, not the least of which is that there are fewer free throws because of how the bonus is applied. In addition, the NCAA was ahead of the curve in adopting the shot clock, a rule utilized in less than a dozen states that play under NFHS rules.

The state's girls basketball committee has been asked from time to time over the years whether it should fall in line with NFHS rules. They've explained their position and then seen the Executive Committee vote overwhelmingly in 2011 and 2014 to stay with the NCAA rules.

In the spring of 2017, the NCAA made some changes to its women's basketball rulebook that had little or nothing to do with high school basketball — namely changes to the size of the coaching box and how to handle the use of video replay. The girls basketball committee went to the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee that fall to get approval for waivers to those rules.

It should have been a formality, especially since there were already several such waivers on the NYSPHSAA books. But a discussion ensued and someone asked about how many waivers it would take before the basketball committee abandoned NCAA rulebook altogether in favor of the NFHS version.

That one comment has led to the subject making it onto the agenda of the past five quarterly meetings and expanding the debate to boys and girls volleyball, softball and girls gymnastics. There has been thorough discussion and even a decision to hold a vote on how the final vote will take place.

That vote will come Thursday as the 22 sectional delegates cast ballots.

Been there, done that

Mea culpa. I erred above by only mentioning Will Rogers, Mark Twain and W.C. Fields. I forgot that George Santayana's name pops up regularly as pundits remind us that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Well, it's also true that those who cannot remember the past get a second chance at writing it down so that they don't have to remember it. Here's what I'm talking about:

Probably three or four times a year a player from somewhere around the state is wrongly ejected from a game for an offense committed by another player. It's unfortunate but also understandable because chaos sometimes ensues as a shoving match escalates to punches being thrown and perhaps benches even emptying. In that context, it's not out of the question that an official might mis-remember a uniform number while sorting things out once everyone calms down.

The problem is in the repercussions, since an ejection carries with it the penalty of an additional one-game suspension. Numerous appeals in most sections across the state have been turned down over the years because there has been no process on the books to allow the misidentified player to appeal.

Except ...

The agenda for Thursday's meeting notes that someone recently realized that the issue was addressed by the NYSPHSAA Executive Committee all the way back in 2010, when it approved a proposal that allowed for an appeal to be heard. Somehow a notation about the approval was never logged in the NYSPHSAA Handbook, which in the old days was published annually but now exists as a living document — updated frequently on the NYSPHSAA website.

The minutes from the 2010 meeting in which the vote was taken do not indicate the actual wording of the proposal (which hasn't stopped Section 3 from following a policy of its own over the years), so the NYSPHSAA's Handbook Committee worked up a version that the Executive Committee can adopt.

The bottom line will be that sections can now hear appeals as long as they are presented with "clear and concise evidence" that a misidentification took place. And the actual offender will have to serve the penalty.

Let's do it better this time

One more old piece of business is resurfacing Thursday, though it will only be a discussion item at this point, with a vote potentially taken later this year.

Contrary to the belief of some (usually in the aftermath of losing to a private school), New York's rule governing the athletic eligibility of students who transfer has some real teeth to it. Changes adopted a few years ago have led to many athletes having to sit out a year in their preferred sport(s) following transfers, frequently to private schools but also in some instances to public schools.

Challenges to the rule have failed and the number of transfers seems to have slowed to a trickle compared to what we were seeing even as recently as five years ago.

The one aspect of the rule requiring a year of ineligibility that bothers me is that those athletes are not even allowed to practice with their teams during that transition year. Considering that those players are already unable to suit up for games, I've regarded the ban on practices to be petty and unnecessarily vindictive. It came about in a 30-15 vote by the larger Central Committee at its 2017 annual meeting, and I've wondered whether the more streamlined Executive Committee might be a bit more compassionate.

Thursday's attendees will hear a proposal to allow the varsity transfer students to practice, something already allowed in an overwhelming number of other states. Taking it a step further, the proposal could allow students at the sub-varsity level to suit up for games.

That will rankle some, but what the likely critics generally fail to acknowledge is that the emphasis in modified and junior varsity sports has always been on teaching as opposed to winning.